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Frantic search for stricken sailor

Ian Lloyd Neubauer

Race ... the bow of Orion as it leaves Antarctica on the rescue mission. Photo: Ian Lloyd Neubauer

A lone French yachtsman adrift in a life raft south of Tasmania is facing seven-metre swells and winds of up to 75km/h as he awaits a rescue described as a "very big if" by the captain of the vessel trying to find him.

Alain Delord, 63, an accomplished sailor with 17 trans-Atlantic voyages under his belt, abandoned his yacht after activating an emergency beacon on Friday.

"A plane has been able to pick up a signal from the sailor and he appears to be in a life raft, so there are grave concerns for his safety," said Joel Katz, the chief executive of Sydney-based Orion Expeditions, whose flagship vessel MV Orion is scheduled to rendezvous with the life raft at 6pm on Sunday.

Missing ... Alain Deloard.

The Orion, the only vessel responding to the distress call, was 11 days into an 18-day Antarctic and sub-Antarctic tour when it was asked to divert to the rescue. It is equipped with 10 Zodiac inflatable boats and has an experienced crew suited to mounting a recovery effort in heavy seas.

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"It's going to be tough," said the Orion expedition leader, Don McIntyre. "The forecast is for 30-knot winds gusting to 40 knots, and the seas will probably be around seven metres. He has to hang on until tomorrow night and that will be really challenging, as his life raft could capsize at any time.

"His biggest threat won't be sharks but the physical damage from the waves and hypothermia from the cold. Hopefully he will be wearing a survival suit. The French have a very good understanding of the need for survival suits. It'll really improve his chances."

But Orion's captain, Mike Taylor, said finding the yachtsman could be a challenge: "Now that it's become apparent he is in a life raft and not in a boat, it has become more problematic because a liferaft is harder to see. It's a very big ocean out there.

"Providing we can locate him – and that's a very big if – the plan is to put the ship as close to the raft as we can and launch a Zodiac," Mr Taylor said. "The Zodiac is about the same height as a raft, so it's a simple case of tethering the two together and pulling him into the Zodiac. That's it in a nutshell.

"It must have been a hell of a job to launch the raft in the kind of conditions he faced earlier on. So my assumption is he is going to be in a traumatised state."

The moment the yachtsman is brought on board, he will be attended to by Orion's chief medical officer, Chris Bulstrode, an emeritus professor in trauma at Oxford University with extensive experience in Haiti, Gaza and other disaster zones.

"The first thing I will want to know is if he's conscious," Dr Bulstrode said.

"If he is, I will have very little to worry about other than warming him, giving him fluids and sorting out any injuries he's got. It'll be very straightforward."

Dr Bulstrode said a normal sea passenger would almost certainly perish under such conditions, but in this case the chances of survival were high.

"He seems to be a very experienced sailor and they are tough buggers, so I would put his chances of survival way higher than most, perhaps as high as 75 per cent," he said. "With all his experience, he must have got through some similar kind of disaster in the past."